


Victory Fanfare

by villacreek



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, It’s late, Major Spoilers, i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:53:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15561234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villacreek/pseuds/villacreek
Summary: A fallen king lies in wait.





	Victory Fanfare

Oh, life was such a fleeting thing. Human life, especially— the pitiful things perished left and right. What a shame. Ardyn felt as if he could drop dead any minute himself, what with this dreadful cold.

A puff of warm breath, a pouty, _pouty_ sigh hit the crisp, cold air, simmering into dusty fog. He had a pattern going. Watch the breathing, watch the ground below. It wasn’t a _fun_ pattern, per se, but it kept him focused and was simply quintessential to the bigger picture. Without a chaperone, little Prompto could very well perish out here, all alone, save for Aranea dragooning him along. And that would certainly put Ardyn in a pickle.

Prompto had to be alive. For Noctis.

Eyes flickered to the ground and back up again. Of course, he had strong faith in the blonde. His death was but an off-chance—a chance all the same, but an off-chance. From the very beginning, Ardyn had strung him along: gave him a lovely change of clothes, weaponry, many nudges in the right direction, maybe one or two _playful_ jabs (like the patricide one? Please, put that one in the books.) To die after such generous help would be pathetic.

A cloudy breath. Well, if all else failed, at the very least there’d be a corpse hither Gralea for the True King’s eyes.

A rumble from down below prodded him from his little stupor. Through another mist of his own breath, he spotted that shock of yellow, perched on a snowmobile, Gralea-bound. Aranea stood, watching it go. A warm smile crept up Ardyn’s face.

He’d made it. Prompto had beaten his own special level of Ardyn’s meticulously-crafted game. Splendid is the taste of victory. It calls for a song.

And so Ardyn stood primly, humming that little ditty of fanfare while dusting the snow off his coat. He looked up into the wintery sky one last time and savored one last thought.

Two thousand years of waiting and brooding, and he was finally weaving the web he’d always wanted to see.

It was such a pretty little thing.


End file.
